Woodworking blog entries tagged with 'handtools'

Hello friends, I have been meaning to share some tales of a wonderful trip I took at the end of August to upstate NY. Finally I have the chance to get this story and the pictures uploaded. I hope you may enjoy this blog and I thank you for taking a moment and reading….here we go!..........
The road was a winding ride through the beautiful tall green trees of upstate NY. The mountains were a backdrop of a totally peaceful environment showing strength and inviting calm. Around this are...

It’s something about the color of the aged wood mixed with black iron that gives it a feel of a time far gone and yet of great interest to the modern day handtool enthusiast.
I think simply put…my love of traditional handtools and their uses are because in todays high tech modern society it has no business being conducted at all…lol. I love that fact…it’s a dinosaur and caveman pastime…and the masses of hurried gadget grabbers and stressed out overachiev...

Hi once again friends hope this Monday has been treating you well. I thought it might be time to add my third installment of my latest blog and project “Making a saw handle” and I hope you have all enjoyed this mini-series as much as I have in building and posting the progress.
As I have gone on with this build some mistakes were made. I expected greater miscues than I got keeping in mind this is only a first full out attempt at making, fitting and using a handsaw handle…...

A wonderful day for a handplane…....no? Ok, maybe more than one…they are like a favorite junkfood snack…one is never enough!....lol.
I thought I would just mill around a bit in the old time woodshop….sometimes after a project I find it nice to take time and clean some past bought auction finds…..or clean up some messes here or there. Just more of my new approach to not rushing unmindfully straight on into the next idea.
I find doing that confusing and a inn...

My husband spotted this in the cabinet at the Habitat Restore, and pointed it out to me. I’m glad he saw it – I normally never look in the cabinet, because it’s all jewelry stuff in there. It’s a Miller's Falls brace, and a bunch of bits.
The brace is in excellent condition, and works perfectly. I cleaned the old grease out of the chuck, and gave it a wipe of WD-40. The mark on the chuck reads “Millers Falls Co / Millers Falls, Mass. U.S.AR...

Shavings, sawdust, chisels scattered about…and the joyful noise of the mallet sending the message from hands to tenon to mortice….this round of the build contained much learning and honest work. Looking back through these last 2 blogs…..I feel encouraged and seeing my skills grow, sure there are some mistakes but I really see the value my time has bought me with my with study and self challenge.
I would say in review of the last two years playing with all of this woodshop...

Time to travel some different roads this journey and see what becomes of my new project…...The handcrafted country carving throne (AKA milking stool)....lmao! I do try to add entertainment value to these whacky ideas of mine…..so please work with my insanity folks….lol.
I was tossing around various ideas and as the game sometimes goes I just could not get a design topic that made me start to have that creative spark. Then…..so natural I thought, I could use a little...

This particular blog goes out to the beginner woodoworking enthusiast as well as the experienced handplane guru who just enjoys looking at planes.I would fall in between the two catagories and more on the beginner end myself by far….lol. But this is something I mostly hope beginning wood workers that want to start building their own handtool kit will see and read.
One handplane need not cost $200 dollars and up folks….lol. Lie Nielson makes top shelf tools no denying it…....

This is actually Part II of the series, Part I is in part II of the series and Part II is here, hopefully Part III and thereafter will appear in the correct sequence.
One evening after work last week I was finally able to carve out a little time for the NFWB project. I am waiting for a drill press on back order so in the meantime I thought I would start squaring up some of the stock I had previously cut for pieces of the bench. In this photo on the left side of the saw horses is what...

Well friends, it has been one cold temperature spell the last few weeks here in my shop as you may have realized from past blogs. I finally got a chance to tend back to my main project, something new to me as I have never created a seat of any kind before.
I have found the process a lot to learn regarding proper pitch/splay when boring in the legs. It is really nothing all that complicated all the while nothing to get careless with either.
Soon the time approached for me to address my i...